Again, we hate to spoil the fiscal fantasies of the Fake Conservatives, but for all those "red" states out there who voted for Bush last time and calling for tax breaks, fiscal responsibility and decrying the "welfare state", you'd think they were subsidizing the "blue" states with all of their hard-earned tax dollars.

Turns out, as usual, the unreported truth is quite the opposite from the Fake Conservative fantasy.

In fact, the "blue" states, on average, get back less money than they pay out in federal taxes, while the "red" states receive more in federal funds than they put out. Go figure.

[I]t is actually blue states (states that former Vice President Al Gore won in 2000) that subsidize red states (states that President George W. Bush won in 2000). An August 2003 report by the Tax Foundation --- a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that monitors fiscal policy at the federal, state, and local levels --- compared the federal tax burden in each state with the flow of federal funds back to that state for fiscal year 2002. As former Gore speechwriter Daniel H. Pink pointed out in a January 2004 New York Times op-ed citing the Tax Foundation report, out of the 33 states that received more in federal spending than they contributed in federal taxes (what Pink calls "taker" states), Bush won 25. Out of the 16 states that paid more in federal taxes than they received in federal spending (what Pink calls "giver" states), Gore carried 12.

Is it any wonder then that "red" states want to keep their guy in office so they can keep sucking disproportionately off the Federal Government tit without anybody noticing? Red state welfare queens.